I ordered a Nikon Coolpix P1 from Photosweep.com for $323, plus an additional $50 for a 5 year Mack warranty. When I placed the order, the sales person did not tell me it was a grey market camera, nor did it state that it was such on their site. After I placed the order, I received an invoice which led to an error message which contained the logo "Best Choice Digital". I did some searches on reviews of Best Choice Digital, and saw that they had many bad reviews in the past, because of using bait and switch tactics, selling grey market cameras and not including all the parts, charging for orders and not sending anything or taking forever, and not crediting accounts for orders once returned.
I was also a little disturbed by the fact that every time I logged onto photosweep's site, the price would shift back and forth between $260 and $323 every few hours. I called to cancel the order the next morning and was told it was too late, because it was already in their shipping department. On their site, they specify that orders can be canceled before they have been shipped, but this is apparently not true. When the camera arrived, the camera's warranty and accompanying papers were in Japanese, the manual was a stapled copy, the camera was set to Tokyo time, there was no memory card, and the software was a copy of the original software (a cd with a blank label with "PicturePerfect 1.6.1" typed on it) which does not download on my computer. I tried to download the software from the Nikon site, but they wouldn't allow it, since the serial number on the camera was not a US camera, but was instead a grey market one.
Fortunately, I found it on ebay for $. 99. I had purchased a 5 year warranty from Mack when I bought the camera (he told me the warranty on the camera was only 90 days, and that it could only be bought at the time of purchase, which is not true - you have up to a month after purchase to buy a Mack warranty.) There was no invoice in the package when it arrived. I requested an invoice several times by email, and they kept sending me the same email linking to an error message. I called them and requested that it be faxed to me, and finally received the invoice a few minutes later.
I have emailed asking them about the missing parts, and also telling them I had not ordered a grey market camera, and wanted the price for a grey market camera, since that was what I had received. No response, of course, other than "before you start quoting the law, get your facts straight! If you look at our website, you will see that all our products come with a warranty." This is not true - I had to pay $50 extra to get one. They list the camera at $323 on the site, but that does not include a warranty, even though in their policy section they specify that their products come with a warranty. Once I pointed that out, there was no response.
The only good thing was the fact that I ordered the camera on a Wednesday afternoon, and it arrived on Friday. That may have been because I told them I wanted to cancel the order though. They apparently have the items shipped from Tri-State Camera (which is also where the charge appeared to be from on my credit card), and Tri-State is an authorized dealer, so the Mack warranties will work. I just wish they had told me this was a grey market camera before I ordered it, so I would not have had to go through all this extra work.
The camera works, and the warranty will work, now that I have an invoice. This did cause a bit of a hassle for me, and I would like to warn people that their products are grey market, even though they might not tell you that upfront, they are dishonest about what is included, they use bait and switch tactics to sell cameras at higher prices, and that there might be some missing items. Next time I will use B&H Photo or Amazon. I now see that the price is even better at B&H Photo, for a US camera with a US warranty.
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